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Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"

Anything
I say comes from me and represents my personal opinions, views and subtle
plans for influencing society. Read, ruminate over and remember at your
own risk. If I teach you something and it helps, teach someone else.

eez,
you’d have thought a couple weeks ago it was ‘Steed Week’ or something
with all the steed-related stuff that popped up. I even got some mail
asking me if doing all this extraneous stuff detracts from my work on
Quake 3:Arena, and if it did to knock it off and go back to work.
Valid point, but rest assured it doesn’t detract at all.

I did the Sam Hell interview
about a month ago, the GDC lecture was done about a month and a half
ago (Rogue13 at PQ did a bang-up job soliciting and posting it, too),
the TOTB took me about nine hours on the Tuesday it was posted (because
I had forgot it was due – sorry, loony), but as far as that goes, all
the Q3:A related modeling tutorials will be shipped with the
game as a ‘how to’ vehicle so people can get their own models going
anyway. The ‘Dear Mynx’ thing took about a half hour since all I had
to do when answering was think, "how would Mynxie answer this?".
So really the time-sink was well spent and didn’t impact my schedule
very much at all.

Matter of fact this week’s
tutorial came as a serendipitous result of creating another female model
base for some Q3:A characters and lately, that’s the ONLY way
I feel I have time to bang these out – if they’re done in conjunction
with creating real stuff. Then again, I think that’s what you guys want,
some in-the-trenches journal writing. Some of the best compliments I
feel I’ve received are from fellow artists at other companies who feel
they can glean at least a couple tidbits of useful info from
TOTB. Makes it all worth it. And of course all you pups; all you Quake
Huns out there itching to find out how to get your own Q3:A models
going. That’s why I take time out of my busy day to sit down and shoot
the polygonal breeze with you all.

Besides, it’s just another
outlet for my energy surplus that doesn’t say…make it into a plan
file :]

Alright kids, on with the
show... Normally I don’t do this since I think appreciating the female
form (especially the nude female form) is pretty crucial to American
male evolutionary development, but I have to implore you to go elsewhere
this TOTB if you’re under 18. There is some nudity in the following
content so consider this a (shudder) ‘didactic parental disclaimer’
(or DPD for short).

[Editor’s
crude note: yeah, baby!]

First, though I’ll preface
this installment with just a plain, normal disclaimer: I’M SICK
OF ANIMATING!" I need a break from making motion. I’ve been making
some models the last week or so to hone the skills and increase the
number of player characters in Q3:A. The next two installments
will cover issues and techniques used as I continue my efforts to create
the perfect polygonal woman. This is NOT a step-by-step tutorial
on how to make a sexy female model. I’m just using her creation as a
backdrop to show you some (hopefully) useful techniques.

After many hours of exhaustive
Internet research via Tommy’s Bookmarks (http://www.tommys-bookmarks.com/playmates.php)
I’ve decided the perfect woman to help me in my quest is Playboy Playmate,
Kelly Monaco. I like the physical structure of Chloe Jones a tiny bit
better (more back, more rack), but KM really is utter perfection. She
tends to be not only beautiful, voluptuous, 5’ 3", sexy, etc.,
but she tends to face the camera orthogonally (cheesecake is nice, but
this is reference we’re talking about. No. Really. I mean it! She faces
the camera almost dead-on or dead-on sideways, etc.)

So I’ve begun building the
perfect Kelly model. Recently, at the ’99 GDC I got a couple really
useful tips when I gave my lecture on low-poly mesh optimization. The
most useful one deals with vertex merging and weld thresholds. Basically
I found out I don’t have to use the ‘select two vertices – uniform scale
them several times – hit weld selected’ thing anymore. All I do is adjust
my ‘Weld Threshold’ to suit the circumstances (knew WT was good for
something). For example, by default my ‘Weld Threshold’ is set at ‘.1’
when I boot Max up…

This is cool for when you’re
just merging flush vertices along a centerline axis from copying and
flipping half of a mesh like this case…

The ‘.1’ setting just means
that only selected vertices separated by very small distances (.1 units
or less) will merge. Now if you crank up your ‘Weld Threshold’ setting
to say 10 or 20 then it basically serves the same purpose of selecting
vertices outside a .1 weld threshold and scaling them in until they’re
within that .1 units distance. For example, if I were to try and merge
these two vertices with a setting of .1

…I get this error message.

If I change my ‘Weld Threshold’
setting to 10…

…they weld just fine, merging
at their relative median point in x,y,z space the same as if we had
selected them and u-scaled them into a single point...